Are mental health issues more prevalent among the self-employed or among the wage employed in Europe?

This paper investigates whether mental health issues are more prevalent among the self- employed or the wage employed in Europe. Due to theoretical reasoning, two rivaling hypotheses were made. One assumption was that self-employed are generally better off in regards to mental health partially due to their high degree of job autonomy, and another main hypothesis was that the wage employed are better off partially due to a higher degree of work- life balance. Also, rivaling assumptions for the solo self-employed and the employers were made concerning mental health. This was expected by the assumption that the solo self-employed work longer hours due to being on their own and that the employers have less job control due to other underlying responsibilities. Data of the latest wave of the European Social Survey, including 13243 Europeans from fourteen different countries was investigated and led to the findings that self-employed cannot be generalized so easily. It showed that the employers are better off than the wage employed and the solo self-employed in regards to mental health, and it also revealed that solo self-employed and wage employed do not differ significantly from each other on average in their psychological well-being. Furthermore, working hours do not always lead to a weakened mental health, which is evident looking at the employers that work on average 11 hours more than wage employed and 8 hours more than the solo self-employed.